“Yes.”
“Three hundred and seventy-five dollars.”
I blinked a few times and then dug into my purse and pulled out my checkbook. “Who do I make it out to?” I said through clenched teeth.
“The Department of Corrections,” he said and grinned. “You her sister?”
“No,” I said as I quickly scribbled the amount across the check.
“Friend?”
“Not for much longer.” I shoved the check at him.
The cop hit a button on his keyboard, and a printer I couldn’t see started somewhere beneath his desk. He reached down, produced two printed copies, signed and stamped both, handed me one, and then swiveled around in his chair and called to a young black cop who was seated at a desk, bent over and engrossed in a conversation on his cell phone. “Franklin!” he yelled, holding the paper out to him. “Go on down and bring this one up.”
Franklin gave him a blank look and then said something into the phone before flipping the cover closed, standing up and retrieving the paper, and walking off.
A few minutes later he was back, with Chevy following close behind.
Chevy’s face looked drawn. In the three weeks since I’d last seen her, it seemed to me that she’d lost a few pounds. The one good thing was that she looked almost normal in some respects. Her weave was perfect as usual, and a respectable color. And her eyes were the pretty brown God had blessed her with.
“Whew—let’s go, girl,” she said after she collected her belongings and brushed past me, heading out the door into the early-morning darkness.
I was dumbfounded. Chevy had the balls of a bull. She wakes me out of my sleep in the middle of the night, has me pay close to four hundred dollars of my hard-earned money to get her sorry ass out of jail, and then just saunters past me with a “Whew—let’s go, girl”? Like all of this was nothing but a chicken wing—without even a “Thank you, dog”?
I flew behind her, catching her on the last step.
“What the fuck was that?” I screamed at her back, with my hands on my hips.
“What?” Chevy asked, stepping down onto the sidewalk and turning to me.
“What?” I repeated, astonished. “What the fuck, you can’t say ‘thank you’? You just walked by me like it was my duty to leave my bed and come out in the wee hours of the morning to bail your ass out!”
Chevy gave me the “Well, ain’t it?” look, and I swear my hand twitched at my side. I wanted to slap her into next year!
“Look, Chevy, I ain’t your babysitter. We are all grown-ups here, and you have got to learn to take care of yourself and stop leaning on me and the rest of us. Romper Room is closed!” I screamed. I was so angry and riled up that my whole body shook.
Chevy just smirked at me.
“Why the fuck did they arrest you, anyway?”
Chevy looked around for a minute before folding her arms across her chest. When she did speak, her voice came out low. “I jumped the turnstile,” she said quietly, and her face went crimson with embarrassment.
“You did what?” I was stunned. Had she fallen that far? She didn’t even have a dollar fifty to ride the train?
“I’m sure you know by now that I no longer have a job,” she spoke to the night air around us, her eyes fastening onto the street lamp to our left.
“Yes, yes, but c’mon, Chevy, you know you could have called me.” I felt like shit. Now here I was ranting and raving, and this woman didn’t have a dime to her name. It was true: most of us were just one paycheck away from being homeless, and Chevy was proof of that.
“God, Chevy, I’m so sorry,” I said, feeling all of my insides turn to mush. I stepped forward and hugged my crazy, dysfunctional friend.
“Yeah, thanks,” she said, her arms stiff at her sides.
Kendrick pulled the car up to the curb and honked the horn once. “She need a ride home?” he yelled from the open window.
I looked at Chevy. “C’mon, let us take you home,” I said, grabbing her hand and leading her toward the car.
“No, no. I can’t let you take me all the way to Brooklyn. You’ve done too much for me already,” she said and pulled her hand from mine.
“It’s no problem at all. At this hour we’ll be there and back in no time,” I urged.
“No. And anyway, I really need some time alone to think.”
I could certainly understand that. So I dug into my purse, pulled out my wallet, and gave her all of the money I had. “Here, take this. It should be about hundred or so dollars there,” I said, holding the money out to her.
Chevy eyed it and then sighed and shook her head no.
“Please, take it,” I said, pushing the money closer to her. “Take it and I’ll call you tomorrow and we can talk about what’s going on with you.”
Chevy’s hand finally came up and took the money from me. “Okay,” she whispered sadly.
She was breaking my heart. I’d never seen Chevy look so dejected. “Call me tomorrow, okay?” I pressed.
“Yeah, okay, and thanks,” she said before turning and walking away.
I watched her move down the sidewalk and take the first corner.
Something was missing. A friendly hug between sister-friends . . . something.
Thirty-Two
Crystal climbed into the car and turned to face a wide-eyed Kendrick. His body seemed to be twitching with some invisible energy.
Crystal cocked her head. “What’s wrong with you?” she said.
“Nothing,” Kendrick answered and flashed her his million-dollar smile. He turned the music on and began bopping his head to the beat that banged out of the speakers.
“I just want to go home,” she said as she leaned her head back into the leather headrest.
“Home it is!” Kendrick yelled and gunned the car down the street.
After dropping Crystal off at her place, Kendrick went home, stripped himself naked, and stood in the middle of his apartment. Well, it used to be his: now it belonged to Chase Manhattan Bank, which had foreclosed on it two days earlier, giving him thirty days to vacate.
Long gone were the expensive pieces of art that had once graced the walls, the sculptures that once stood on marble podiums throughout the 2,800-square-foot loft, the big-screen television, the leather sectional, the $10,000 entertainment center, and the four-poster Kenyan mahogany bed.
It was all gone, sold off piece by piece in order to sustain his drug habit.
People automatically assumed that because he was the vice president of a multimillion-dollar real estate company, he too had millions of dollars, but that wasn’t the case. His father, Aldridge Greene, simply employed his son. Kendrick was salaried, just like the goddamn cleaning women!
Aldridge had always assured him that there was a trust fund in his name, and of course Kendrick would inherit the company upon his father’s death, but for now, his $300,000-a-year position as vice president would have to suffice, because as Aldridge had put it, “You may be in your forties, but your mind is still that of an adolescent!”
People don’t realize how quickly you could party and sniff three hundred grand away. Shoot, he personally knew some former multimillionaires who’d done it.
The car he drove belonged to the company, and he had exactly ten dollars and twenty-six cents left in his checking account. His credit cards were maxed out due to all of the cash advances he’d taken out, and his savings and mutual bond accounts had been emptied and closed three months earlier.
He was flat broke and homeless now.
When would it stop?
A casual habit had grown in just two years to an addiction. He needed the drug in the same way he needed air to breathe. Kendrick felt as if he couldn’t live without it.
He opened his hand to expose a small vial of Hades—deadlier than heroin and more addictive than cocaine. Kendrick had a $1,500-a-day habit that was climbing. One vial of the copper-colored dust cost five hundred dollars. It was the drug of the super rich.
An Arab
had turned him on to the narcotic twenty-six months earlier, while Kendrick was in Dubai on business. Prior to that Kendrick had been a casual drug user. A little cocaine, amphetamines, and some marijuana here and there.
But Hades made him feel like the man he was expected to be. The second man in charge of a multimillion-dollar company. Hades made Kendrick feel invincible. It kept him going through eight meetings with six different companies over a four-day period. It kept him cool while he negotiated with Mexican investors in an outdoor café underneath the searing Acapulco sun. It kept him on his toes when dealing with the Nigerians.
Kendrick needed it just to be in the presence of his father, Aldridge Greene. He couldn’t stand tall or look directly into his father’s eyes without a hit of it.
But now the money was gone. So there he stood in an empty apartment: one vial left and a new day dawning.
What was he going to do?
Thirty-Three
There is something definitely wrong with me, I thought as I sat watching the sun rise over the New York City skyline. Crystal’s money still clutched in my hand, I chastised myself about being a bad friend.
I stood up, looked quickly around me, and then gingerly dug my hand down behind the waistband of my slacks and into my panties, where I had the roll of money Abimbola had given me earlier in the evening, tucked safely and securely down between my legs.
“Three thousand dollars,” he’d said when he handed it to me. “One run, that’s all I need. One run from here to California.”
“You want me to be a mule?” I said, astonished by the proposal, but more astonished by the amount of money he was going to pay me to do it.
“Yes, if that’s the term you’d like to use,” he’d said coolly.
“You’ll receive three thousand dollars more when you deliver the goods in California,” Cassius interjected between sips of her champagne.
We were at a small Greenwich Village Italian restaurant. A cozy little place that had expensive food and a sultry ambiance.
I’d learned that Cassius was his second wife and business partner. His first wife was in Lagos with their three children, and he was currently on the lookout for a third.
“Oh, that’s nice” was all I thought to say on that subject.
“I—I don’t know if I can do that,” I said, still clutching the money in my hands. “The airport has those drug-sniffing dogs.”
Abimbola bent his neck left and right, cracking it loudly. Cassius’s right hand went up immediately and began to massage his neck.
“Only for the international flights,” he said.
I rolled the money between the palms of my hands. Six thousand dollars could buy a new fall wardrobe. “How would I carry it?”
Cassius and Abimbola looked at each other and then back to me. “Inside of you, of course.” Cassius spoke to me in a tone usually reserved for a potty-training two-year-old.
“Inside of me?”
“Yes. We’ll fill condoms with the stuff, and you’ll swallow them.” My eyes bulged.
“Of course, you’ll have an enema before you do so,” Cassius added.
“Y’all are crazy,” I whispered, still holding on to the money.
“And if this trip goes well, you can make more for us, if you’d like,” Abimbola said, before he picked up his fork and jabbed at his penne pasta.
“I didn’t say I was going to make this trip!” I snapped at him and leaned back into my chair.
What a waste of words and breath. Abimbola had me pegged from the time he saw me. Poor little black girl trying to play rich. Hanging out at the bar at the Cirpriani, scoping out fresh meat and old money. He knew I wouldn’t say no, even when I was sure I would.
“Let me think about it,” I said and waved my hand at the waiter to bring me another glass of wine.
And he’d let me walk out of that restaurant with the money. “Good faith money,” he’d said as he and Cassius climbed into their chauffeured limousine.
Yes, he’d offered me a ride, but I told him I needed time alone, time to think. The exact same thing I later told Crystal.
But when I left him, I strolled the streets of Greenwich Village, gazing at the beautifully dressed windows of my favorite expensive boutiques, mentally picking out what it was I would come back the next day to purchase.
It wasn’t really late, but it was dark, and this was New York City, and I did dress in a manner that made me a target for purse snatchers and muggers, so I strolled into the twenty-four-hour Duane Reade drugstore and purchased a travel-size package of Kotex. Next, I walked into Starbucks, snatched a plastic knife from the commissary table, and waited at least ten minutes on line for the ladies’ restroom.
Once inside, I removed one of the sanitary napkins from the package, used the plastic knife to slit it lengthwise, and then slid the three grand between the two halves before tucking it safe and sound down between my legs.
Hey, I grew up in the hood—I knew what I had to do to keep my money safe.
Back out on the sidewalk, I was confident that, short of a rapist approaching me, my money was safe.
That’s when I realized that all I had left in my wallet was seventyfive cents. Not even enough to buy a Metro card. There was no way I was going down between my legs to get some money, and besides, transit wouldn’t take a bill larger than a twenty.
So I was left with no other choice but to jump the turnstile.
I looked around the lonely station and saw that there was an old blind white man with dark shades sitting on the bench to my left, his Seeing Eye dog curled and sleeping at his feet.
To my right was a young, thug-looking black boy who was carefully scanning his surroundings the same way I was as he prepared himself to take a piss against the wall.
That was it, except for the rats that scurried up and down the tracks and the token booth clerk, and she was too engrossed in her telephone conversation to pay me any mind.
So I jumped!
My feet had barely hit the platform when a heavy hand came down on my shoulder.
“Shit!”
It was the young thug.
“What are you doing!” I screamed, thinking I was being mugged. “Hellllllp!” I shrieked as I balled up my fist and swung at his jaw.
Suddenly there was another hand on me and I turned to see that it was the old blind man, and up close I realized that he was wasn’t old or blind. And his Seeing Eye dog wasn’t a Seeing Eye dog at all but a vicious German shepherd whose jaws were tearing at the cuff of my slacks.
“Police!” the young thug screamed as he ducked my fist.
“What?”
Both men dug into the tops of the shirts and pulled out badges connected to silver link chains that hung around their necks.
They ran my information and it came up that I had warrants. No surprise to me. I knew they were there. Two, in fact. One for running a red light back in 1992 when I rented a silver Mustang for my birthday weekend. That was back when I was living large and really foul. I’d gotten a boyfriend of mine to rent the car for me; of course, he didn’t know that my license had expired. When I ran the light at Broadway and Eighty-sixth Street, the police officers confiscated the car, wrote me a ticket, and told me that I needed to appear in traffic court the next day. Of course, I didn’t go, and I never saw that boyfriend again.
The second warrant was for shoplifting. That was a big misunderstanding; I just forgot I had that $400 dress in my hand when I started out the door. It was an honest mistake—really, it was. I was looking for the perfect dress to go to some high-caliber Upper East Side party with this German plastic surgeon I’d met and I’d been in the store so long that I’d gotten really warm, and so I removed my jacket and slung it over my arm so I could be more comfortable. I had three or four dresses in my arms by then, and when none of them actually tickled my fancy I returned them all back to the rack, except one, the one that was the same color as my jacket.
Believe me, I didn’t realize I still had the dress wh
en I stepped out that door.
They booked me, and my mother came and bailed me out. Once again I was given a court date but never showed up for it.
How Thomas Cook had missed those two blemishes on my record must have had something to do with all the praying I did when I handed in the job application!
Thirty-Four
Why you calling me and telling me lies?” I whispered into my headset.
“I’m telling you, it’s the truth,” Crystal whispered back to me from her office two floors up.
“Arrested, for jumping the turnstile?” I said again, for the umpteenth time.
“Yes,” Crystal breathed.
“Don’t they just write you a ticket and send you on your way?”
“I wouldn’t know, Geneva. I’ve never jumped the turnstile.”
“Well, Eric did once, and they just wrote him a ticket.”
“Really? I didn’t know about that.”
“Well, it’s not like he got on the honor roll, if you know what I mean.”
“I hear you.”
“She’s got to be lying.”
“You think so?”
“Chevy? C’mon, you know she’d rather tell a whole lie than a quarter of the truth!”
“Yeah, I suppose so.”
“So does Noah know?”
“Who knows? He’s going through his own shit. I got an e-mail from him yesterday.”
“Really? What he say?”
“Just wanted us to know that he was still alive, but going through something.”
“You think him and Zhan broke up?”
“I dunno—he didn’t say.”
“Oh.”
We were silent for a while.
“We’re going to have to get together and have a coming-to-Jesus session with Chevy,” Crystal said.
“Like an intervention?”
“Yeah, something—anything to get this girl back on track.”
“She ain’t never been on track,” I reminded Crystal.
“True,” Crystal said wistfully.
“So are we going to go back to Brooklyn?” I asked.
“We might have to, ’cause I don’t think I’m going to be able to get her to come to us.”
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